“There’s a scary noise,” she said. “It goes ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump. It’s on the stairs.”
Agnes drug herself out of bed. She put a finger to her lips as a reminder to her daughter that they needed to be quiet. It would not be a good thing if she woke her father. They tiptoed out of the bedroom and down the hall. Ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump. They turned on the hall light. The ker-thump sounded louder now. At the top of the stairs a large frog was jumping up, hitting the wall and bouncing back down to try again. Jumping up one step at a time had got him this far. Why couldn’t he jump onto the next step?
Earlier in the day, my sister’s four children had happily caught frogs. They were planning to fry the legs and have a feast. But by the time they got back to the house, it was too late. So they put all the frogs in an empty fish bowl and covered it with a piece of aluminum foil. Then they went upstairs to bed.
It was easy to catch the escaped frog because he had nowhere else to go. When they went to put him back in the fishbowl, they discovered that it was empty. The frogs had not settled down to sleep. Eventually they broke through the aluminum foil and scattered throughout the house.
Agnes woke the other three children and once again they were on a frog hunt—this time in their house. They scurried around very quietly to catch the escapees. They did not wish to wake their dad. Eventually they had found all the frogs—at least they thought they had. One seemed to be missing. But maybe they had miscounted when they brought the frogs home. They put a new piece of aluminum foil on the fishbowl and weighted it down with a pile of books before they went back upstairs to bed.
The alarm went off early. Agnes turned it off and got out of bed. There were water restrictions because of the drought. Getting up early to water the lawn was the only option if she wanted to keep it green. Her shoes were not where they belonged by the side of the bed. Even though they would be too big, she decided to slip on her husband’s shoes and go turn the water on. When she shoved her foot into one shoe, there was something cold and squishy in there. She removed her foot and pulled out a very indignant frog. You’d have been even more unhappy, she thought, if my husband had squished in with you.
Agnes’ children and the frog were all pleased that it hadn’t been their father putting on the shoe which had become a frog’s hiding place.
All the little noises of the daytime pass right by me. But if I hear an unusual noise in the dark of the night, I begin to worry. Is someone trying to break into my house? Is one of my kids out of bed and roaming the house? Did I make sure the front door was locked? Is it just a branch scraping across my window? The list goes on and on. I listen carefully to identify the source of the noise. Once it has stopped or I have identified its source, I roll over and go back to sleep. A noise is only a noise, after all.